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       # September's five questions
       
       Poking around the Tildeverse gopherholes, I dig reading different people's answers to these monthly questions. Here's my first go at joining in.
       
 (TXT) Christina's September questions
       
       1. If you had the ability to compete in the Olympics, what event would you want to compete in?
       
          Reflexively my answer is skateboarding, though throughout its whole arc of becoming an Olympic sport, I held different kinds of doubt: whether it would actually happen, whether it would be good for skateboarding, or whether it would be good to even watch.
       
          I'm not into skateboard competitions. I entered them as a kid in the 80s and early 90s. That era of skateboarding was a low point for skateparks -- skating happened in the streets, or in private backyards. Contests were as much about competing and moving forward in skating and sponsorships as they were irregular events where you'd get to see people from the surrounding region -- friends, familiars, and people who you heard about that ripped. But today's competitions, even the ones modeled on street, are skatepark events.
       
          Anyway. Two paragraphs in and I feel like this is a topic I'll need to revisit and expand on. Thanks for this prompt, Christina! Anyway, the other sport would be biathlon. I cannot ski nor shoot well, but what a crazy combo sport.
          
       2. Growing up, what was your favorite comic strip?
          When I was very little, Blondie held prime real estate in our local paper, top of the daily section and front page of the Sunday pullout section, in color, and I loved it. Also on Sunday afternoons, one of the TV stations would play the old B&W Blondie films, making a twofer.
       
          I was also fascinated by Dagwood's sandwiches. Even though I'm not all that hype on sandwiches in general, his spirit spoke to me.
       
       3. Have you dreamed of flying, falling, or running? Describe your most vivid memory of one of these dreams.
       
          Can I claim all three, yet still none at all? During high school, I found a dusty yellowed paperback about dreaming in a used books store. This was pre-internet, so finding info on niche or fringe topics was deliberate or rare, especially in the suburbs. I remember trying for days to train myself to recognize I'm dreaming, and then it finally working. The trick was to get in the habit of reading things, like a posted sign or ad, looking away, and looking back. In a dream, the book said and I experienced, the words would change or disappear. The established habit would carry over into actual dreams, and then you'd know you could start to mess around and control them. The other tip that stuck was that flying is different for everyone, and if you can't, try jumping. And I did. I'd take running starts and jump super far -- it felt like I was the Hulk leaping mountains peak to peak. In all that hang time, my legs would still do a slow-motion run -- basically air-walking while I ascended and eventually fell back to earth, or the next rooftop. I did do mountains, and did think of the Hulk, but in this pre-Matrix era (or maybe more accurately for me, in this high time of pre-TV Mirage Comics Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Daredevil) I was still fascinated by the city, and trotting the skyline across rooftops.
       
       4. Do you believe in an afterlife? 
          I actively try not to think about it. I hate to think we just disappear. I also can't imagine going into an afterlife with my current consciousness, and existing there with these memories, and seeing/looking for those who passed before me. Or those I've always wanted to meet. But that's how we talk of it, and if it is that way, I can't fathom how insanely crowded the afterlife is now. How many people have died before us?
       
       5. Do you have any advice, tips, or tricks for differentiating ignorance from malice?
       
          Used to be, Hanlon's Razor would always prove useful: don't attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence. But a lot of crappy situations today could be labeled with whynotboth.gif.
       
          Actual answer: Patience and open-ended questions work well, if you have enough of the former and the will to do the latter genuinely calm and inquisitive.